Teenager beats rare brain condition and saves sight – after her father finds miracle cure on the internet

A teenager has beaten a rare brain condition that nearly robbed her of her sight – after her father found a miracle cure on the internet.

Charlotte Durham has a condition that causes her body to pump spinal fluid into her skull – pushing down on her brain and causing crippling migraines.

Doctors warned the 19-year-old that she would have to undergo a series of risky and expensive operations to try and save her sight and halt the horrendous headaches that had plagued her for years.

But the teenager was given a pioneering new treatment after her father read about a promising medical drug trial online and convinced doctors to try it.

Just six months later Charlotte, from Cresswell, Staffordshire, has been given the all-clear.

She said: ‘I’m so grateful to my dad for finding the treatment and to the hospital for funding it.

‘I dread to think where I would be without it.’

Charlotte was the first person in the UK to be prescribed Octreotide – a drug usually used to help hormone imbalances – to cure idiopathic intracranial hypertension, which affects just one in every 100,000 people.

Andy Durham, 50, an engineer, googled her condition – and discovered a paper about a medical trial that had been held in Greece three years ago.

The results showed that 24 out of 26 patients were completely cured of the condition after six months of taking the drug.

He took his findings to his daughter’s neurologists at University Hospital of North Staffordshire, who agreed to buy a two-week supply of the £28-a-day drug.

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